I don't see what's the great mystery about it... battery life hasn't really changed much because batteries haven't really changed much. Simple as that. There haven't been any major breakthroughs in battery technology since the 1980s. Incremental changes have boosted capacity somewhat, but PC hardware also draws more power than the stuff 20 years ago, so it evens out.

The "mystery" behind it is that people want smaller, thinner and lighter devices which doesn't go so well with large batteries. And miniaturization in that sector doesn't really happen as much as with other hardware.

Six hours on decent backlight level would be an excellent battery life considering the possibility of spare batteries. Be glad that they at least use Li-ion batteries for no noticeable memory effect...

32 hour laptop battery

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech … -32-hours/10739

The laptops that get 6 hours plus are usually the low end ones and even then they have to run in power savor mode just to get by. The dumb trend that everything must be as thin as possible does not help at all. A new laptop can and will get 6 hours but after a few cycles the battery will only hold about 4 to 5 hours then stay that way for a long time. The average battery life is a lot less being around 2 hours on anything higher end than an Atom or E/C series and ultrabook especially if it is more than two or three years old.

In the end it evens out how you use it and how you tweak it. Got on old Latitude D630 that can do roughly 4 hours but if I replace the media bay battery and upgrade the cpu to a 45nm model along with a ssd I know I can get 5+ on power saver.

nforce4max wrote:

The dumb trend that everything must be as thin as possible does not help at all.

This. There have been a lot of interesting innovations in battery technology lately, and they keep on coming, but the market is naturally more concerned with pushing out "stylish" devices than actual technological breakthroughs.
Back around 2007 or so, 8-10 hours of battery life for a laptop was actually common...

It is pointless (to me, and most people, I imagine) that so many modern laptops try to be wafer thin, even at the cost of a decent keyboard (which is vital for a good typist). The first laptop I had was in the late 90s, a Toshiba Satellie Pro, which was quite chunky when compared to today's laptops, but I never once wished it's height (I mean the distance from the table top the laptop was on to the top of the lid of the closed laptop) was smaller. If anyone does wish a laptop is smaller (because of the trouble of carrying that laptop, or of trying to use it on a crowded train) then they would wish it were narrower, or lighter (in weight), not that the smallest of it's three dimensions were even smaller.

If anyone does wish a laptop is smaller (because of the trouble of carrying that laptop, or of trying to use it on a crowded train) then they would wish it were narrower, or lighter (in weight), not that the smallest of it's three dimensions were even smaller. I carry my laptop in my rucksack (backpack) as it's easy to carry and far less likely to get lost or stolen, and though the laptop is a bit inconvenient in size when carrying it, that's purely in the length and width of the laptop, the height is no problem at all, and wouldn't be if it were two or three times as high.

And if I was buying a laptop, and I was going to choose between an ultra-thin one, or one that was two inches thick but had twice the battery life, I'd definitely choose the latter.

I read an article about Samsung and their phones. They said thinner sold better than chunkier with more battery life... Sad reality..

vetz wrote:

I read an article about Samsung and their phones. They said thinner sold better than chunkier with more battery life... Sad reality..

Yes. Although with phones there is some argument to make them thinner, as ideally a phone should fit comfortably in your pocket, and for pockets to look good (if you're vain about your appearance, which so many phone-posers are) they shouldn't bulge as they do if a phone or something is too thick.

But a laptop is made to fit in a bag, and in a bag large enough (and strong enough) to hold a laptop I don't think anyone would seriously begrudge an extra inch of thickness (laptop height), especially not if it allowed better performance (due to larger components) in the laptop.

Kerr Avon wrote:

Why is it that laptop batteries have stayed at the same capacity (as in hours per discharge) for the past couple of decades, at least as far as I can see? Typically they seem to last for a maximum of six hours (give or take an hour or two), depending on what you're doing with the laptop, and it just seems a little strange that even though today's laptops are *massively* more powerful than the laptops of the mid 90s, the battery life hasn't been extended (or if it has, then not nearly as much as you might expect). A laptop that had a battery life of twenty four hours would be great, and such a good battery capacity would be a big selling point, I'm sure.

Apologies if I'm missing something obvious, such as maybe today's batteries are much more powerful than the batteries that powered 1990s laptops, but this is negated by today's laptops needing much more power from their batteries (but even so, I'd have thought today's batteries would be powerful enough to take this extra power demand in their stride, and still last a lot longer than older batteries?).

DING! You have hit upon the reason right there. While current batteries are not orders of magnitude better than the old ones, they do still have significantly improved capacity, it is just that they are being asked to do more: power high wattage CPUs and GPUs, run high-res HD screens with power-hungry backlighting, and so on. If you were content with the computing experience offered by a TRS-80 model 100 you could power it for about a week on 4 (I think) AA batteries. If you really wanted to make something that was optimized for battery life, you could do it but it probably wouldn't be anything most people would want to use. You would be limited to something like a Raspberry Pi for the computing, SD card for storage (maybe an external USB drive cobbled in) and a low power screen of some type (like an E-ink screen). Once you start talking about color and high-res and backlighting you start using lots more juice. You could probably make a system even with a color screen based around an R-Pi that would last 24 hours on a charge but it would have to run off one of those bigass 10,400 milliamp hour external batteries. And unless you have some serious industrial design skills it would be ugly as hell, too. You would likely have to build a custom case to house everything.
The hard part is not so much making something that you can use or that will run a long time, the hard part is doing that and making it look like a consumer product. Google "homemade laptop" sometime if you don't believe me.

Apple MacBooks are said to have long battery life. The most recent one up to 16hours...

The battery in my Nokia phone lasts about 10 days without recharging 😀

I remember reading somewhere that those TRS 80 model 100s easily lasted a month in stand by before losing anything saved. I despise working on ultra thins as it makes it more difficult to service when something needs to be cleaned or replaced. Gave up using compressed air and traded in some brushes. Plastic body laptops are often the worst when it comes to everyday wear.

Some time after the Sun swells into a red giant but before the universe dies a heat death 😀

some time after we figure how to cheaply mass produce graphene.

When planned obsolesence is no longer a thing. 😜